The Hon. Freddie Threepwood is engaged to be married to the wealthy American heiress Aline Peters, but his absent-minded father, the Earl of Emsworth, has unknowingly purloined an invaluable scarab from Aline’s father, and is displaying it in his castle museum. Multiple parties are working on retrieving the scarab without causing offense to the earl or alerting his secretary, the efficient Baxter.
While many of the characters are just being introduced, the groundwork for the charming and irresistible Blandings series are all laid. The absent-minded earl is introduced, but not his obsession with gardening and his prize-winning hog; his dim-witted son Freddie; and the one person holding it all together, his secretary, the efficient, bespectacled Rupert Baxter.
One thing unusual about this book which Wodehouse almost never revisits in any of his other books: he describes the two distinct worlds in the large estate houses of the time, the world of the masters and the world of the servants. Each has its own strict hierarchy, and rigid customs. Each has its head, and fiefdoms.
While perhaps not as amusing as the later books in the series, this is a solid first book and, unusual for Wodehouse, a read in equal parts enlightening and entertaining.